A collection of book plate designs

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COLLECTION

BGDFL PLATE
D ESIGNS

"BY

LOUIS
RHEAD

W- PORTER
TRUESDELL
PUBLISHER.

2021488

ELDOM is it that knights of
the brush whose work is of a
like high quality are as prolific
and wide in range of talent as
Louis Rhead, who paints in oils
and water colors, draws and
etches. He is also an expert on bookbinding,
and at the time when posters wrere in vogue was
known as one of the foremost designers, having
won a number of medals in competitions and ex-
hibitions, and has several hundred designs to
his credit.

Mr. Rhead came to this country in 1883, and
at once became very active in his art, painting
pictures which have been exhibited in the prin-
cipal cities of this country, in the Paris Salon,
and Royal Academy of London.

Mr. Rhead was born in an artistic atmos-
phere, Etruria, Staffordshire, in which town the
celebrated potteries of Josiah Wedgewood &

Sons were made. The members of his imme-
diate family are all artists; his elder brother is a
member of the London Society of Painter-Etch-
ers, and was the friend of Rossetti, George
Frederick Watts, Madox Brown and other ar-
tists of note, of whose work he has executed
many large plates. Mr. Rhead's father and
mother, two sisters and two brothers have also
made reputations in the art world.

Mr. Rhead seriously began to study art at the
age of thirteen, under the French painter
Boullemier. He learned to draw the human
figure remarkably well, and won a national
scholarship, which enabled him to study at
South Kensington. Four years later he was
well launched on his artistic career, and was
earning a comfortable income. He was still an
industrious student, however, and improved his
art by work under Legros Dalou, the sculptor,
and Sir Edward Poynter, President of the Royal
Academy.

After devoting himself for a time to making
sketches and paintings of rural England, Mr.
Rhead was engaged by the publishing house of
Appleton, New York, and, at the age of twen-

ty-four, came to this country, where he has
since remained, except during the intervals of
several trips to London and Paris.

The artistic publications of the Grolier Club,
of which Mr. Rhead has been a member since
1887, owe much to his fine skill in bookbind-
ing and cover designing. Among the best and
most representative examples of his designs are
the inside and outside covers of a new edition
of "Knickerbocker's History of New York,"
by Irving. Mr. Rhead recently illustrated and
decorated a number of books of classic litera-
ture, among them "The Pilgrim's Progress*'
and "Mr. Badman," by Bunyan, "Idyls of the
King," "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Psalms of
David."

He regards his illustrations in black and
white of Bunyan's works, and particularly of
"Mr. Badman," as his highest achievements
thus far. These drawings, which were done
in collaboration with his brothers, George and
Frederick, are so strong and virile that they
have given new interest and fresh life to Bun-
yan's classics, which were beginning to come
into the category of books often referred to but

rarely read. Louis Rhead made the larger part
of the drawings. They are in the style of the
old German engravings and seem to precisely
reflect the essence of Bunyan's powerful and
gloomy imagination, and also the quaint and
picturesque England of the roundhead writer's
time. The grotesque and fearsome allegorical
figures, the giants and the dragons have, in
many of the pictures, typically English back-
grounds. This combination results in a very
effective representation of Bunyan's genius.

In his book-plate designs Mr. Rhead has
been equally successful; and seems to have
brought to this branch of art all the originali-
ty, decorativeness and perfection of his larger
and more pretentious work. His tendency to-
ward the decorative received an added impetus
from his appreciation of the masterly designs of
Eugene Grasset, whom he regards as the great-
est living master of decorative design. As a
rule, the designing of book-plates seems to have
been given over to the so-called decorative de-
signers, who, while excellent in their particular
field would not come under the same head as
those who, like Mr. Rhead, devote the most of

their time to painting in the illustrative vein,
so it is of moment when artists like Mr. Rhead
have turned their attention to the book-plate,
and given us some beautiful examples which
reflect the breadth and maturity of the practised
artist. A number of the plates herewith show
the force of this in their general sketchiness as
in the Swan design: for beautiful decorative de-
signs, the Peacock and Pool plates; for studies of
the human figure all the plates and particularly
the two architectural designs and the Turnure,
Barhydt and Katharine Rhead plates. Always
an ardent sportsman, Mr. Rhead has latterly de-
voted himself to out of door subjects, and his
books on Lake and Brook Trout, Fresh and
Salt Water Bass are among the most admired
of the nature books. Mr. Rhead's fishing plate
is shown herewith also the handsome plate of
the Ivy Club of Princeton University.

KATHARINE/RHEAtf

EVonx
the book& of

KATHARINE^RHEAD

MAJORIBUSM PERPETUQ QUAESITHS

LIBRJS
FRANK cJ-POOL

ex-HBRie

HEX LIBRIS OEF

SdUSIGIAN

W-H-SHIRrCLIFF

•8-WASHINGTON-97

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